A Duel To The Death
by Satan Mekratrig
Summary: Two students duel for the Inter-House Duelling Championships - and one dies. Written for Challenge 77 on The Dark Lord's Most Faithful. AU.


**Written for Challenge 77 on The Dark Lord's Most Faithful. I'm uncertain whether I should tell you guys who I'm writing for, but as it's relatively easy to guess I won't. ;)**

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Into a dirt circle twenty feet across two slight young figures stepped, dressed in short-cut battle robes with bare arms. One, a girl with long yellow hair tied back in a tight braid, turned and headed for the north end where a ball of green light hovered. The other, a boy with shoulder-length black hair held out of his face by a thin silver headband, walked towards a floating sphere of red light at the south end.

A third person entered the ring, a tall wizard with silver robes, striding into the centre of the ring. He raised a hand and turned slowly in a circle, then clenched his fist. From the rows of black-robed witches and wizards sitting in tiers round the ring a loud 'Ho!' went up, and the two combatants echoed with a 'Ha!'

"The final round in the Third Year Inter-House Duelling Championships!" the silver-robed wizard proclaimed. "Our contestants, Ilyana Petrov of House Danube—" the blonde girl raised her clenched fist in salute, leather straps wrapped round it and between her fingers to provide support for her hand and wrist, "and Vladimir Rákóczi, of House Bucharest!" The boy at the south end gave a sweeping bow, then raised a fist to his brow.

The silver-robed wizard took several swift steps back out of the ring and made a complicated wand motion, causing a huge dome-shaped shield to materialise over the arena, flickering for a moment before becoming transparent. The two contestants stared at each other, the girl tense and ready, like a coiled spring, her eyes boring unblinkingly into her opponent's; the boy stood at his ease, almost nonchalant, a small smile curling his lips, blinking freely with an air of langour that he might almost be expected to yawn and fold his arms behind his head.

"Fight!" the silver-robed wizard's voice snapped out across the ring like a whip-crack.

Instantly Ilyana shot off a Stupefy, splitting it seven ways and sending them all arcing towards the boy from different directions. Split-seconds before they reached him he flickered out of existence, the stunners colliding in a flash of red light. Ilyana didn't hesitate; she leapt into the air, casting a wide-angle cutting curse at shin-height and another at waist-height. Somersaulting gracefully at the top of her leap she came back down as her curses dissipated against the shield, only to meet a bludgeoning curse which hurled her to the ground.

Her opponent reappeared two steps away, wand outstretched. He whipped it down with a muttered "_Concussa unda,"_ sending a shockwave rippling towards the girl who rolled aside and sent a fireblast at him, following it in quick succession with an ice javelin, a stunner, a bludgeoning curse, and a summoning charm. Vladimir, still smiling, sidestepped the fireblast, shattered the ice javelin with a well-placed Reducto, ducked the stunner and diverted the bludgeoning curse with a slashing motion of his wand — only to be taken unawares by the summoning charm, which Ilyana had cast on his testicles. His eyes widened in pain as he was yanked towards her by his balls — straight into a metal pole she had conjured up. The crunch was clearly audible even in the top tier.

Ilyana did not give him a moment. The metal pole bent in half, the upper end whipping down to slam into the ground where his head had been had he not moved it at the last second — despite the pain, Vladimir seemed to have kept his senses and reflexes intact — then transfigured itself into a chain which wrapped round him and began constricting. Ilyana followed it with a heating charm on the chain links, an expelliarmus split twenty ways, none of which hit Vladimir's twisting and bucking form as he tried to escape the chain's coils, and then a Repulso on the writhing boy that hurled him across the ring into the shield, which flickered and shot him straight back into the centre of the arena.

Swiftly Ilyana continued her attack, snapping off another summoning charm — at Vladimir's face — and crafting a steel plate from the dirt, which rang like a bell when Vladimir collided with it. Yet another bludgeoning curse slammed into the boy, sending him sprawling, then a rain of ice javelins shot down around him, pinning him in place. The girl darted over, conjuring an ice platform to stand on that overlooked the trapped boy. Slowly she raised her wand for the coup de grace, her face showing the first sign of emotion since the fight began — a feral grin of triumph.

Below her, Vladimir looked up through swelling, pain-filled, panicked eyes and mumbled the first spell that came into his head with bloody lips.

"Iugula!"

A jet of ruby light soared up from his wand and hit the surprised girl, who took a step back and glanced down at herself. Finding nothing apparently wrong with herself, she raised her wand and prepared to cast a spell — and blood gushed from her mouth as a gash gaped wide open in her throat, blood spurting out in a great stream. Slowly she keeled over and collapsed on the ice platform, the blood flowing over the edges and pooling on the dirt below.

"Vladimir is the Champion!" the silver-robed wizard proclaimed into the shocked silence. Slowly the boy pushed himself to his feet, staring emotionlessly at the thirteen-year-old girl's dead body. Silently, he vowed to himself: _Never again. Never again will I kill. For your sake, Ilyana, I will be the best there is - so that I do not have to kill to win._

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**Sorry if it ended a bit abruptly. I wrote it and then it wouldn't come past this point. I have found that when I reach the point of rewriting the ending twenty times or so it is basically irredeemable. Maybe I'll carry this on. Depends what...what _the author_ says ;)**


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